Our Switch founder and CEO, Marc Mültin, talks about Josev Community, our new, free-to-all open source implementation of ISO 15118, and why it’s so important to us and the electric vehicle (EV) charging industry.

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I’ve always believed in two things: sharing knowledge and moving in a greener way. For me, Switch is about helping others in the e-mobility industry to innovate and to accelerate the switch to electric vehicles. Working together, we’ll get there quicker. In our third episode of the Switch to Clarity webinar series, we presented for the first time Josev Community – our open-source gift to the e-mobility community.

It’s an exciting time, and I’m proud to be sharing with you today more about Josev Community and what’s next for us all. 

To do that, I’ll run through some answers to a couple of great questions I’ve been asked, from the overview to the tech side, giving you a good idea of what Josev Community is all about. 

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🚀 Josev Community is now LIVE. Explore the code here today

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What is Josev?

Josev stands for Joint Operating System for EV charging. It’s an operating system for EV chargers that acts as the brain of the charging station. 

Here’s what Josev does:

• optimises the interoperability and scalability of operation between EVs, charging stations and cloud-based charging station management systems (CSMS)
• its flexible architecture allows for third-party integrations and it evolves with the newest industry standards - that’s what makes our Josev software different (and better)
• so take Plug & Charge, for example, where you don’t need to input a payment card or carry around RFID cards from various mobility service providers; the car and charging point simply ‘talk’ to each other in the same language. Simply plug the charging cable in and start charging
• yet, not all EV chargers are ready for that kind of capacity because the software inside them is not working from the suitable standards we need to get EVs and chargers to talk to each other
• Switch’s software is, however, precisely made for such a job. And it’s down to two pieces of EV charging standards (or ‘protocols’): ISO 15118 and OCPP 2.0.1. More about that later. 

Our all-new website has even more about Josev. Take a look here

What is Josev Community?

Josev Community is a baseline part of our commercial Josev Professional offering that we are making free and accessible for everyone to use. That’s why we called it Community - we wanted to let everyone get their hands on this unique code for EV chargers. 

You may ask why we’ve done this (being a business that makes money), and that’s a good question. For us, the answer is simple: we want the whole e-mobility community to start with the same building blocks when it comes to creating a solid foundation for better EV charger software. We believe in moving together in a greener way; it’s part of our mission.

By making sure everyone has access to Josev Community, we can all build EV chargers with advanced features. 

We aim to create a seamless charging experience for everyone and, this way, get more people to trust in reliable charging infrastructure for EVs through our software.

Can you tell me more about these standards in Josev Community?

Sure. My team and I are working hard to get Josev Community released in May 2022. Josev Community will contain the following protocol implementations, written in (for those of you who love a bit of tech) Python:

• DIN SPEC 70121
• ISO 15118-2
• ISO 15118-3
• ISO 15118-20 (AC and DC, to start with; later on also pantograph charging via ACD-P and wireless charging)

In Josev Community, we'll also include our modified version of the popular EXIficient codec, extended with support for ISO 15118-20 messages. This will be available as a JAR file (Java). This codec allows EVs and chargers to exchange messages efficiently.

What exactly is ISO 15118?

In a nutshell, ISO 15118 is an international standard that outlines the digital communication protocol that an electric vehicle and charging station should use to recharge the EV’s high-voltage battery. 

As part of the Combined Charging System (CCS), ISO 15118 covers all charging-related use cases across the globe for all kinds of EVs, be it cars, motorbikes, buses, trucks, ships, or even aeroplanes. 

This includes wired (AC and DC) and wireless charging applications and the pantographs used to charge larger vehicles like buses.

What comes after the free-to-all Josev Community?

I’m glad you asked. What comes next is Josev Professional. It’s part of our complete Switch Suite for charging station manufacturers and operators. 

Josev Professional is based on Josev Community and comes with crucial additions: 

• a fully-featured implementation of OCPP 2.0.1
• an MQTT API and message broker to seamlessly exchange information between the ISO 15118, OCPP 2.0.1 and EV charger OEM-specific code
• our own EXI codec, written in the Rust programming language, which allows for better performance and more sensible error messages than EXIficient
• our ISO 15118 message analyser, which logs the communication between EV and charger to enable an in-depth message analysis via Sara, our cloud-based CSMS.

Some of the benefits of Josev Professional are:

• stronger data security
• Vehicle-to-Home (V2H) and Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G), which is where the EV gives energy back to the home or the electricity grid
• user-friendly Plug & Charge, which makes those easy-to-lose RFID cards and a myriad of smartphone apps a thing of the past
• improved transaction handling, meaning a charge point operator (CPO) can define what triggers the start and end of a charging session
• better charging station management, enabling the CPO to visualise all charger components in great detail and to set rules for custom notifications (enables predictive maintenance)
• smart charging is enabled for both basic charging and ISO 15118
• saves charging point operators time and money
• and more.

What is OCPP 2.0.1?

Let’s take OCPP first. OCPP stands for Open Charge Point Protocol and is the standardised building block for communication between EV chargers and cloud-based charging station management systems, sometimes also referred to as back-end software.

There have been several versions of OCPP, and the latest version is 2.0.1. That’s the version we prioritise in Josev Professional.

OCPP 2.0.1 - especially when we combine it with ISO 15118 (and the latest version, ISO 15118-20) - allows us to create software with more of the new, advanced and future-proof features I discussed above.

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🚀 Josev Community is now LIVE. Explore the code here today

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